because it is the only one in which she had set herself a technical
problem of exceeding difficulty. She chose to use the faithful old
retainer to tell the tale of the family's downfall in consequence of its
weakness, its violence, and its vice. Thady has never a word of blame
for any son of the house he has served generation after generation.
Indeed, he is forever praising his succession of masters; but so
artfully does the author utilize the device of transparency that the
reader is put in possession of the damning facts, one by one, and is
soon able to see the truth of the matter which Thady himself has no
thought of revealing,--which, indeed, he would probably deny indignantly
if it was suggested by any one else.

The chief reason why the novel is still held to be inferior to the drama
is to be found in its looseness of form. The novel is not strictly
limited, as the play must be by the practical necessities of the
theater; and the practitioners of the art of fiction permit themselves a
license of structure which cannot but be enfeebling to the artists
themselves. Few of the novelists have ever gone about a whole winter
with a knot in their foreheads, such as Hawthorne carried there while he
was thinking out the 'Scarlet Letter.' And only by strenuous grappling
with his obstacles was he able to attain the masterly simplicity of that
Puritan tragedy. A resolute wrestling with difficulty is good not only
for the muscles but also for the soul; and it may be because they know
this, that artists are inclined to go afield in search of difficulties
to be overthrown, that they set themselves problems, that they accept
limitations. Herein we may see a cause for the long popularity of the
sonnet, with its restricted scheme of rimes. Herein, again, we may see a
reason for the desire of the novelist to try his fate as a dramatist.
"To work successfully beneath a few grave, rigid laws," so Mr. James
once declared, "is always a strong man's highest ideal of success." The